More than 200 LP Brown Elementary students counted down from ten and watched a rocket streak into the sky as Olympia High School's Aerospace Club brought its national-level rocketry program to the schoolyard.

On June 21st, the live launch capped a STEAM event at the Olympia elementary school that included paper rockets, gliders, and flight challenges run by the high schoolers. LP Brown principal Shannon Ritter called it a hit: "That was so cool, the kids thought it was awesome!"

The club, founded in 2023 by Keven Shen (class of 2025), has grown to more than 190 members across Olympia's middle and high schools. It fields 16 rocketry teams, has logged more than 130 launches, and placed 18th at the 2025 American Rocketry Challenge national finals in The Plains, Virginia, a competition that winnowed 1,001 teams from 46 states down to 100 finalists. The Olympia School District confirmed the placement on its official Facebook page.

Ryker Kollmyer, an Olympia High junior and the club's vice president, said the LP Brown event fit the group's outreach mission. He told ThurstonTalk the club skips long lectures and instead places a project directly in a student's hands, offering a serious engineering pathway unlike a typical classroom or academic club.

The club is free to join and operates on roughly $9,500 a year, raised through grants and local business sponsorships. It uses the Puget Sound Silent Flyers' flying field for launches and competes in four to six competitions annually.

The outreach numbers back up the ambition. The club says it has reached more than 2,000 younger students in three years of operation. Fellow member Evan Jolliff won two special awards and second place for his aerospace research project at the Washington State Science and Engineering Fair, a passion Kollmyer said the club sparked.

Next up: free workshops for K–5 students and families at the Hands On Children's Museum in Olympia on Wednesday, June 24 (11 a.m.–3 p.m.), Friday, July 3 (3–7 p.m.), Wednesday, July 29 (11 a.m.–3 p.m.), and Friday, August 7 (3–7 p.m.).